Wally Nes’ Blog

Dear student,

Good news! Your internship report has been evaluated with a ‘’satisfactory” . This will also been shown on Blackboard.

Good luck with your further study!

We would like to use your report to inform furture students. Would you be so kind to send the digital version as a ‘Word’ document (particularly the part of the evaluation) per email to me.

If you have already send this to our internship office, please disregard/ignore this request.

Thank you very much for your cooperation.

Kind regards,

The internship coordinator

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Sound of the day:

DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUUUUUUUUH

- regarding the fateful statement “The end of the paperwork”

So, the day was finally there. The Final Presentation.

I’ll do a bit of background info first: I’m currently doing the “vulcanus” program (for those of you that haven’t bee

n paying attention), and part of this is a 4 month intensive Japanese language course (The same as the previous braceted comment). This course ends in . . . . a final presentation. We had to team up and then research something that would force us to go out and speak to japanese people (in japanese) and well . . . . present it. This would serve as a good guide to show our company representatives what level we now posess and it would keep us out of (too much) trouble. The latter was mostly high hopes as it would turn out later, it merely challenged us to do mischief in new ways we wouldn’t have thought of earlier.

The subject of our final presentation would have to be relevant to our specialities. I’m the only aerospace engineer. My teammates include the only general mechanics, superconductor and biotechnology. I was in the . . . . whatever’s left group. This made choosing a topic agreeable to our teachers tricky. But due to the fact that the Japanese will decide everything on consensus . . . and we were not giving way (Gee, really? Japanese Culture works that way? Ah man, if only we’d known . . . .) . . . we got to do something on Japanese culture. Since we all have plenty of experience at being students . . . . we did our research/interviews/final presentation on “time spent in school and how it affects the final product (eg. Japanese)”. As you may, or may not, know: The Japanese view the world rather differently than we do. . . even if it were only from a perspective angle. And we were wondering how much of this different view of life is acquired during school.

I’ll transform the Powerpoint we have to a pdf pretty soon, and there’s a video which I will put on Youtube . . . but I think we’re only getting that in March. I’d post what we said . . . buteuhm . . . The only one that would get it is Maya if Marnix needs something translated. So in stead you’ll get a video in a couple of months, I’ll try and add Japanese and English subtitles then.

In an attempt at . . . something one of our teammembers decided to just not show up ’till 2. I suppose I could’ve worried about it . . . but I didn’t. Would’ve added a nice footnote to our presentation if we had to hackle through his piece.

We were the first presentation after the coffee break, and my illness (I’ve been sick for 3 weeks now and I’ve moved from suffering to ignoring it . . . with the exceptions of when I REALLY need to go to the bathroom as ignoring that would be ちょっと . . .) held up remarkably well. Some whoozyness, but most importantly: No diarrhea during the presentation (YES!) I steamrolled through my bit with little hesitation . . . and my joke wasn’t as poorly received as many people thought it would be . . . which wouldn’t have been bad either as I had a joke ready for that aswell. A slight confidence issue had me glancing at my sheet more than was strickly necessary, but at least I was able to look at the crowd some and point at the screen occasionally while others would not look up from their sheets of compressed tree. The people following me did well aswell, including the fellow who showed up late, especially because what he was saying wasn’t what we’d been practacing ’till that day and he was doing it without any paper backup at all . . . and still managing to do it faster than when he used the script. The reason he was late was: He just decided to re-write . . . everything. And our presentation was closed by our member suffering from a severe throat-illness-thingy without croaking too much . . . but being so caught up in her presentation the clicking-to-the-next-slide was left out and we went from her second slide to . . . . “Thank you very much for listening” in a speed I hope was high enough for people not to notice the other slide we flicked through.

All in all . . . . we did well. Didn’t win any prizes, but we did manage to provide answers that were vaguely relevant to the questions asked as our Japanese is now developed enough for that.

Now, that takes care of business as well as I can without actually showing the video or posting the script to draw you more into the story . . . I guess it’s more of an “insider-thing”

Anyway, it being the end it was followed by a “this is the end”-party. A buffet which was combined by a secret-santa, some performances and a farewell to one of the staff

I can not begin to describe some of the things that happened there, so I’ll leave that ’till the people who filmed it put it on the internet and the pictures have been released. But it was good.

Parties are a lot like . . . . bad news. It seldoms comes alone. The japanese school also threw a christmas party. Seeing as I’ve always followed lessons on a different location: I knew absolutely no-one there. Which had no ill-effect on the party whatsoever. (Speaking Japanese with Dutch people and see how long it takes them to figure it out )

After this party . . . . (getting tired here, busy day ‘ya know. And still sick to boot) Carl Cox was the featured DJ in a club in Shibuya. Now, I’ve been to a party with him once before and I wasn’t totally blown away, but the qualityof music to the places I’ve been to so far has be so dismal that I knew this to be a vast improvement. In our absence (Going to the Japanese school party) the meeting time had been changed from 11 to 11:30, so we ended up just going in with the 2 of us. This caused us to end up on a dancefloor which facilitated actual dancing. Some drinks and incidents later (I swear; Do I have “I am Dutch, we do drugs. Ask me how” tattooed somewhere?) Mr Cox took the stage. By this time this picture describes the dancefloor pretty well. OK, the lighting was a bit different, the people were dressed a little differently and on the whole maybe a little more enthusiastic . . . but the available dance moves were, by this time, somewhat more limited. The rest of the program’s students showed up at (lemme see: meet at 11:30, they’re italians so that’s 0:00, walk to the club . . . .) 2:15, including the departing staff member and 2 of our teachers (well, I was told 3, but apparantly she was so smashed she didn’t present a verticle target for me to identify). The mood was excellent. Dancing followed. Free wine was provided by people I met while they were offering wine. Strange blond women hugged me and other women taking off shirts because . . . “hey, I don’t need those here . . . right”.

By 3:30 however, myself and my equally sick girlfriend (The price you pay for kissing me) could no longer keep to our feet for reasons ranging from splitting headaches, too frequent required use of toilets, explosion-threatening bowels and just general I’ve-been-sick-for-3-weeks-now-please-let-me-sleep’ishness. Taxi and “brufen” (Japanese and their pronunciation eh) provided us with a well earned rest far into today.
Well worth it though.

On a small side note: I’ve added pictures of the sushi workshop. It comprised of making sushi . . . and getting people stupid enough to eat pure wasabi hehe. Also, note my time card of last month.

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No Quote of the day today. I’ll use this space to link other people’s pictures of today when they post em

Pawel

Final Group photo

Closing skit

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OK, there’s a Quote of the day anyway:

I’m not sure I want to see an “Alien” movie with what’s coming out of my throat now

- Raphaelle

OK, so to gauge our progress in the Japanese language they make us write small essays. This month’s essay was about Japanese culture and customs. I’ll admit to copy-pasting that complete sentence just befoe the end from an online translator. Not quite at that level yet. Also note that I use spaces . . . whereas you’re not really supposed to. Enjoy.

日本の文化は　ちょっと　むずがしいです。でも　もっと　奇妙　文化　生きて　そして　その文化は　奇妙すぎませんでした。

私はカルチャーショックがあらいないで　それは　ちょっと　ばかだと　おもいます。でも　たぶん　レヴァルスカルチャーショックは　オランダで　９月に　あります、でも　それじゃない　と　おもいます。

まい日　私は　日本に　来たから　しあわせです。たくさんことは　とてもおもしろいこと　があります、でも　日本人は　最もおもしろい。私はたくさん日に　バーでや　が　電車でや　が　山の上で　日本人と話ます。

日本のことは　とてもちがいです　が　だいたいは　おもしろいです。

私はいつも侍がおもしろい思いました

ぶしどはおもしろくていい概念です。　いま　ぶしどは　ちょっとへんですが　それは　ながくて誇りなれきしでした。たぶん　ぶしどは　日本で　しょうらいに　あります。

ていねいなかたはおもしろいです。でも　日本人ていねいことをつかって、それから距離つくります。私はそれが名案であることを確信していません。

じゅうどうとからてはちょっといたすぎます

でも　きゅうどうがすきです。

私はおちゃがすきですがさどうはちょっとへんです。

完全性の検索は日本文化に名誉を与えます。でも　あることが完成するのしてはちょっとばかです

私の日本のすきなことは日本人です

ワリー

It’s not like I don’t have anything to write about that’s happened over the week. It’s just that you don’t read this blog to hear that sashimi is delicious . . . again. I’ve told you that. Things have sort of gotten into a rut. But that’s good. I wouldn’t want to come home only to be brutally slaughtered out of feelings of pent up jalousy.

So other than living in Tokyo. Yes, yes, I know. Thank you, too kind. Well if you insist, maybe I do deserve this honour.

Euhm, where was I
Oh yeah, last weekend I made my way through Japan in a manner more fitting my station than how I have been getting around lately. I left the nightbus for what it was and shinkansenned to Osaka. I was there to meet with some people of the company I will be working for (Note to self: You are not here JUST for your own pleasure, try to keep that in mind). There’s a short version and a long version of what transpired that day. I will start with the short version.

My dorm SUCKS
Big Hairy Donkey-balls.
CRAP

It’s not that the walls are pink . . . . of the ENTIRE building.
It’s not that I’ll be living in a structure closely resembling the hotel from “The Shining”.
I’m sure I’ll have lovely neighbours
It’s not even the hour-and-a-half I’ll be spending getting from my dorm to my work
Nor the hour-and-a-half I’ll be spending getting back

It’s that I’ll end up spending €3000 on the fucking public transport getting me there every day.
Add on top of that that I’ll be eating during this time (A luxury, I know) And that’s all my money.

The euhm . . . company people are really nice though. The town I’m living in seems equally nice. But the money I’ll have to spend . . . oh bog.

‘Course, it’s not as bad as all that. I can cut out the bus costs of about 7 months by buying a bike (They’re quite cheap here) and I can get a monthly pass, which cuts down on the costs some (I’ll have to see how much exactly). And in the pink building I’ll have my own fridge.

OK, I see how one could read that and frown slightly, but the Gajin have their own fridges in their room whereas the Japanese (and there’s a lot of Japanese living there) will have to share . . . . 1 fridge. One. Singular. Hundreds of Japanese . . . One fridge. I’d like to see that in action.

About what my internship is going to be about. Well, this is as good a place as any to tell you that I won’t tell you. I signed a secrecy clause and that means you’re not allowed to know. niener niener niener.
No, but seriously: We’ll discuss my project come Januari. I will have 6 weeks or so to set stuff up while they acquaint me with their technology and methods. I work for a small R&D company within Mitsubishi Electric called Switchgear Insulation Technologies (or something to that extent). I’ll leave you in google’s capable hands for you to find out what switchgears are. There’s 22 people running around and we get to use our lab and stuff from around the rest of the company grounds (and there’s a couple of thousand people working in the rest of the compound so that’s a lot of toys to play with) if we need to test in that environment/on that piece of equipment. They do R&D and some accreditation, so they do some KEMA stuff.

Anyway, who am I to waste a free ride on just a company visit.

Oh, haven’t I mentioned that yet? The shinkansen was covered by the EU Centre.
So anyway, I took a train to Kyoto. Met up with the Fair Maiden and cristopher, who as of yet has not received an affectionate nickname. And we ventured forward into Kyoto.

Well, that is to say, the Fair Maiden had taken the nightbus to Kyoto and walked all day, I’d had a rather exhausting day and Christopher was in equally high spirits. So we slept . . . . and the next day we ventured bravely into Kyoto.
A point of interrest is that we stayed at a Ryokan, a traditional Japanese Inn’ish thing. I haven’t done the picture upload thing yet but I’m pretty sure I completely forgot to take any pictures of the room.

Kyoto is known for many things:
It’s history as nations capital
It’s Temples
The other Temples
The colour of the turning leaves
A specific bunch of temples
The old imperial Palace
The old Geisha district
And some temples scattered through the city.

There’s some nice walks through and around Kyoto, but as the weather was kind of shitty on saturday we didn’t do any of that and we went to see . . . . hmmmmm, let’s see. Oh yeah: temples. The highlight of the day was the Nijo-jo though. A former palace of someone or other. ( really, you’re not in Japan, if I called him Shogun Keessie would you really mind?) The gardens were nice, the structure itself was quite impressive, and especially the nightingale floors had us discussing how that would work exactly.

Though we managed to lose Christopher halfway through the afternoon he was not that easily gotten rid of. Doomed to spend the weekend as a group of 3. During his absence we did manage a relaxing Onsen (you all remember what an onsen is right? I’ve mentioned it twice already. It’s a natural hotspring/spa thingy). I got to talk with the old naked wrinkly Americans about gardening and the Fair Maiden got to speak with their wives. Also I tried speaking Japanese with someone, but my vocabulary limits my choice of subject severely and I always seem to end up speaking about windmills, tulips and Andy Sawa. That gets kind of old after a while. We spent the evening strolling about the geisha district but saw nothing but (very nice)old buildings and a lot of tourists. No Geishas

Sunday was spent walking the philosophers walk. A good chance to reflect on your life while enjoying a nice walk. An excellent place for breakthroughs. I had one . . . or several, but as soon as you leave the walk the breakthroughs leave you. It’s a zen thing I suppose.
We saw some truely excellent Temples Sunday, and the weather made that I got some really nice pictures. (They’ll be up soon). The turning of the leaves has only just started, so we saw only a little bit of red but one can see why Kyoto is famous for it. If oyu find yourself in the neighbourhood in a week or 2 a visit is well worth it.
Nishiki market was next on the list. A place where you can buy most of everything you will ever find on a Japanese menu. The smells and tastes were intoxicating and some of the food was so fresh it still moved. No, seriously: they kill the some of the things in front of your eyes.

The time to leave was already upon us unfortunataly. A mere shinkansen ride away Tokyo awaited us, and if I’d read my schedule a little bit more thoroughly (or at all) I’d known I was racing towards a test. Goody. But as I didn’t know that, I got to end the weekend on a high note

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Quote of the day:

But I don’t know anything about doing that!

Ah, but this morning you had no experience at all of being dead, and yet, but for my intervention you would nevertheless have turned out to be very good at it

We continue to study the Japanese language and today we covered numbers

Now, within european languages counting has been done in different orders. Whera-as the english will pronounce the 8 in 83 before the 3, the dutch will pronounce the 3 first and then add 80. Having grown up in this system we take it for granted, but our system isn’t actually that easy.

So while I was warned I thought I would probably be able to swing it. At first glance, the Japanese system differs on 2 points. First, it’s a perfect decimal system. That is to say: They have words for 0-9, 10, 100, 1000 etc. and they just combine these to good effect. 2-10 means 20 and 4-10 means 40 . . . fairly simple. However, while we have names for 1-9 . . . .  they have several

• 0 = zero / reko
• 1 = ichi
• 2 = ni
• 3 = san
• 4 = yon / shi
• 5 = go
• 6 = roku
• 7 = nana/shichi
• 8 = hachi
• 9 = queue / ku

And you use the different names for the different numbers at different times which . . . .  don’t seem to be governed by rules. It looks like there were 2 different systems and the first system to discover a use for the number would incorporate it in the system . . . .  or something.

 Aaaaaaand, that’s just the beginning of things. Because after lunch we moved on from simple numbers (under 100) to bigger numbers. Because it would just be too easy to allow us to keep using 3-100. 300, 600 and 800 are exceptions in the X00 scale. 3000 and 6000 are exceptions in the X000 scale. And they don’t work in multitudes of 1000 . . .but 10000. A thousand ten-thousand is 10 million and a thousand 100-million is etc etc etc. Very confusing for those working in the SI system where everyting leaps by 3.

That I can handle though. It’s when applying the numbers where things start to get interresting. Because while the Japanese language has no casus as we understand them . . .  they have them in counting.

• 1 flat thing = ichimai
• 2 flat things = nimai 
• 1 round thing = hitotsu
• 2 round things = futatsu

There are this many catagories in which someone can count things and note the fact that the round counting words don’t have anything to do with the ichi, ni, san, yon list I gave earlier of normal counting words. The amount of exceptions in counting is about 1/3 or 1/4 of the total available number of words. How on earth am I going to learn that.

And than there’s normal japanese.

• They have words
• They have a negative addition
• They have a Formal addition
• They have a formal negative addition
• They have a past-tenst formal negative addition.

The last one is quite a bit longer than most first ones.

Oh goody, I get to learn Japanese.

Because I have no more fitting title than that.

So, still in Japan. Haven’t been deported yet.

Another aspects of Japan worth mentioning is the culinary one. People that know me know that I am not a very diverse eater. I like my food simple. And as most dutchies: “Wat een boer niet kent, dat eet ‘ie niet” or “If I don’t know it, it won’t get past my lips”. I have to say that 60+% of food I’ve consumed here is not immediately recognisable. And only 15% of that can be identified afterwards. Right now I’m munching on a bakery product made up of . . .bread’ish stuff with . . . seeds and green transluscent stuff. Some of this stuff is nice . . . others aren’t. Within beverages I’ve found that the Japanese have a coffee fixation offering even Ice Tea with Coffee flavour, which next to the dozens and dozens of iced Coffees seems rather odd. I’ve eaten noodles, and rice and vegetables and meat and fish and . . . stuff I’m pretty sure doesn’t fit in any of those catagories.

Now, I know that it sounds like an odd thing to describe. I ate meat and fish . . . whoopie. But the thing is, I’ve eaten meat’ish substances of which I was pretty sure it was meat. But I’ve also eaten other stuff which turned out to be meat later. And a slurpi’ish substance which turned out to be raw krab (also available in belgium I’ve been told). There have still been 4 meals so far which were nice but I wouldn’t be able to describe it beyond noodles, vegetables and fish/meat/tofu . . . and I’m not always sure which one to cross out. Ohhhhh, seaweed looks a lot like spinach . . . just so you know.

On another point: The Japanese lessons have started. I’ll write more about this later as it will take more then the 10 minutes left in this lunch break to describe it. Suffice to say that it will be hard . . very very hard. For convenience they will make Kanjis out of smaller Kanjis. “Rock” and “Head” will combine to mean “stubborn”, “moon” equals “month”, “sun” equals “day” AND “sun” equals “Nippon”(japan) though both suns are different. And moon and sun (month and day) don’t combine to make calender . . . .but “bright”. Mouth and Bird means “to Cackle” and “person” and “tree” means “rest”. So far I know 3 different meanings of “ki” and all are pronounced the same but are written differently . . . Just to keep things clear. The Japanese keep assuring me though that it’s all quite logical. But from a country that produced the Quote of the day . . . . I’m not so sure

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Quote of the day:

Yes = Maybe

Maybe = It’s Difficult

It’s Difficult = No

No = I don’t like you, please go away